


camouflage

by illimerence



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dubious Consent, Internalized Transphobia, M/M, Porn with character development, Trans Character, Trans Inquisitor (Dragon Age), dubcon is not inquisitor/bull and is not explicit, mild misgendering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:27:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28380003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illimerence/pseuds/illimerence
Summary: Max has spent so much time worrying about people finding out his secret, invested so much energy in wondering what awful things people would think or say if they found out, that he never even stopped to imagine that anyone would be so understanding of it - let alone the man he's been mooning over for months.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Iron Bull
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	camouflage

**Author's Note:**

> this fic contains a brief description of a traumatic sexual situation. please read the end notes for a more thorough content warning, especially if you are trans. you can skip part four if you know this will be triggering for you. stay safe!

1.

Max steps from the relative warmth of the Chantry out into the icy Haven air and pauses for a moment to collect himself. War table meetings always end with him on edge, a tightening in his chest and a weight on his shoulders, and he’s considering heading to the tavern for a drink when he sees a stranger approaching. It’s the last thing he needs, really: he’s more than enough decisions on his head for today, thanks, and he’s about to turn and walk away, but – there’s something familiar about him. He can’t quite figure it out. So he waits.

The stranger is a little taller than him, dressed in heavy armour and with a sword at his hip. There’s a measured quality to his walk that Max recognises, something deliberate and practiced. He’s clean-shaven, more so than most soldiers Max’s known, and handsome enough that for a moment Max thinks maybe he’s one of the long string of men he’d pulled off behind taverns across the Free Marches but never let touch him back. The feeling of familiarity is so strong that Max is preparing for that awkward moment of recognition where they acknowledge that they’ve met before but talk around exactly how.

“Excuse me,” the stranger says. “I’ve got a message for the Inquisition, but I’m having a hard time getting anyone to talk to me.” He’s got a working-class Tevinter drawl, and speaks slowly, like he’s being careful about his choice in words, or the shape of them in his mouth. But that’s not why Max’s heart leaps into his throat.

He’s sure no one else would notice. The man is doing a damn good job of it: his armour is more than enough to conceal his anatomy, and everything about him from his stance to his voice is purposeful, designed to come across as masculine as possible. He speaks from his chest, like a prepubescent boy trying to seem older; he keeps his shoulders squared and his head up in a way that could come from military training - or could come from studying the way men stand.

Max recognises these things because he’s seen them before, in the mirror.

He keeps his face carefully blank. He doesn’t want to let the man know he’s caught on. (He’s had it happen to him before. It’s never ended well.) Instead, he says, “Who are you, soldier?” in a voice lowered not by practice (although he had), but by years of daily potion-taking.

“Cremisius Aclassi, with the Bull’s Chargers mercenary company.”

Later, Cullen will want to know why Max is so set on recruiting a mercenary company, of all things, and one led by a Qunari at that. “I just don’t see how the possible benefits outweigh the risks,” he says. “They’re a mercenary company. How reliable can they possibly be? And a Qunari?” He runs a hand hurriedly through his hair. “Are we certain we can trust a Qunari?”

“I’m just going to meet them,” Max says. “I’m not trying to draw up a contract here and now.”

“The possible connections a mercenary company as wide-travelled as the Chargers could bring us would be advantageous,” Josephine points out.

“And we need all the soldiers we can get,” Cassandra says. “We can get more discriminatory  _ after _ the templars are recruited.”

“Or the mages,” Max says.

“Or the mages,” Cassandra concedes.

They ride for the Storm Coast the next day.  


2.

There are a few people in the Inquisition who Know. Cassandra knows, Max is pretty sure: she’d seen him, after the conclave and after that first battle, unconscious and undressed. By extension Solas must know, and Adan definitely. 

Max had spoken to Adan about it, uncomfortable but desperate on that first full day at Haven. “Please,” he’d said, not quite able to look him in the eye, “You can’t tell anyone.”

“Way I see it, ‘s not my business anyway,” Adan told him.

Max had felt unbelievably relieved. “Do you think Cassandra will tell? Or Solas?”

Adan shrugs. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them yourself.”

“Right,” Max said, and then didn’t, but if either Cassandra or Solas treated him any different because of it he hasn’t noticed. Neither of them have said anything about it, and there are no rumours as to his anatomy spreading through Skyhold (it’s one of the few things there are no rumours about).

Leliana knows, of course; had probably known before he even joined the Inquisition due to his family’s status and her eyes everywhere. Cole must know, he sees everything else in his head well enough, but he’s also seen enough to know not to mention it.

Cullen is the one person he’d told himself. He’d found him in his office, pale-faced and shaking with a lyrium kit on the desk in front of him, and Cullen had pleaded with him, in that serious, steady way of his, to keep his secret. Max had told Cullen then, his voice steadier than it would have been had this happened only a few months earlier.

“There,” he’d said. “We both have secrets. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

So: Cassandra and Solas, possibly. Adan, Leliana, Cole and Cullen, definitely. 

It’s not exactly how he’d like it, but what’s done is done, and no one’s said anything awful about it. And, well, Krem is part of the Inquisition now, and as far as Max can tell he’s getting on just fine. Hard to tell, though – Max doesn’t exactly go out of his way to socialise with the Chargers, or the Iron Bull himself.

It’s not because he doesn’t like them – quite the opposite, really, especially when it comes to the Bull. Because around the Bull, Max goes sort of… odd. Like he forgets what he’s saying and laughs too much and, on occasion, comes out with the world’s worst pick-up lines entirely without meaning to.

Thank the Maker the Bull seems to be entirely oblivious to his little crush, or else is kind enough to pretend it doesn’t exist; Max doesn’t know what he’d do if the Bull turned him down outright, after his sleeping with seemingly half the Inquisition already. Or, Maker forbid, if the Bull turned around one day and said, “Right, how about it then?” and Max would have to make excuses, back out of it somehow even though he desperately wants – well.

Good thing it’s not going to happen, anyway.

3.

Max draws on every inch of his noble upbringing to keep his face some measure of normal. Krem is just… talking so casually about binding his chest, like it’s the most normal thing, the equivalent of shaving one’s face or lacing one’s boots. 

He doesn’t seem to care who knows; if anything, he seems almost proud of it. Max is so nonplussed by this turn of conversation that he doesn’t realise that the Chargers are turned towards him, waiting for him to say something, until his silence has become noticeable, and he scrambles for words.

Unbelievably, he hears himself say, “Oh, are you -? I… didn’t realise...” He trails off, hoping his lie isn’t obvious.

“Great,” Krem drawls. “Now we can all talk about it.”

Max feels himself redden, starts to apologise before Bull cuts in, “In Qunandar, Krem would be Aqun-Athlok. That’s what we call those born one gender but living like another.”

Max is caught even more off guard, if that is possible. The Qunari have a word for that? A word for what he is? For a moment he wishes desperately for a word like that in Common, because every way he can think of to describe himself feels like a lie:  _ A woman passing as a man. A woman who wants to be a man. A man who used to be a woman. _

“And the Qun don’t treat these Aqun-people any different than real men,” Krem says, his voice warm. Max knows how he feels.

‘They are real men,” Bull growls. “Just like you are.”

Something odd is happening in Max’s chest, a slow bloom of heat not unlike lovesickness. He’s spent so much time worrying about people finding out his secret, invested so much energy in wondering what awful things people would think or say if they found out, that he never even stopped to imagine that anyone would be so staunchly understanding of it – let alone the Bull, the man he’s been mooning over for months.

He manages to shake himself out of his shock in time to ask after the rest of the Chargers, spends the next few hours getting to know them and, by the end of the evening, is almost proud of himself for setting aside the voice in his head that is making a non-stop “!!!!” sort of sound in order to actually be a person.

The Bull’s boys are the kind of people his mother would very much not approve of him associating with, and he likes them all the more for it.

Before he retires for the evening (he’s well on his way to being drunk, and means to stop in to chat with Sera and Cole and to check on Cullen on his way back to his rooms) he leans into the Bull, bumping their elbows together.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. 

“For what?”

“I – needed this,” he tells Bull. “I’ve been so on edge since we got here and, I don’t know, you always seem to know what I need before I do. So, thank you.”

“No problem, boss,” Bull says, and smiles.

4.

The last time Max let anyone else touch him, he was seventeen years old. There was a boy, Barnett. They’d been friends a long time, since before Max cut his hair, since before he stopped wearing dresses, even. They’d grown up together, and Barnett knew him better than anyone, even his own mother, and Max had trusted him, because he’d had no reason not to.

It was early summer when Max had decided he didn’t want to be a Lady, even one who wore her hair short and preferred hunting and fencing to the more delicate arts. And it was early summer when he and Barnett had taken the horses out, ridden through the forest behind the Trevelyan estate to the lake for the first swim of the season.

When they were drying off in their smallclothes on the rocks by the lake in the afternoon sun, Max had haltingly, shakily, told Barnett that he would rather be a boy, and Barnett had been so sweet about it, so warm and kind. He called Max by his name, when they were alone together, told him he was handsome, how lucky he was for a boy like Max to love him.

It was almost All Soul’s Day, the first time they made love. The first and last time Max let anyone touch him.

They’d found an empty room in a deserted corner of the estate, one where Max was almost certain they wouldn’t be disturbed. They were both so nervous. Max’s heart had been beating so hard in his chest he could swear the whole house would hear and know what they were doing.

And Barnett was on top of Max, and he was pink all down his face and chest, and he was brushing Max’s hair out of his face with a trembling hand, and kissing him soft and familiar. And he called Max beautiful. He cupped one of Max’s breasts and kissed his cheeks and called him pretty. He touched his waist like he was something delicate and small and feminine.

“You’re crying,” he said, after. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Max lied, curled on his side, curled in on himself. “No, I’m okay.”

“I love you,” Barnett said.

_ You don’t, _ Max didn’t say.  _ You love her, and she doesn’t even exist. _

They didn’t sleep together again. Max took to avoiding Barnett, to hiding in the upstairs library when he came by the estate or to riding out into the forest in the opposite direction of the places they used to go together.

Barnett wrote him a letter.  _ I don’t know what I did wrong, but I’m sorry. If you will tell me, I will try to make it better. I miss you. _ But what could Max say? Barnett hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. He couldn’t help that he wasn’t attracted to men. He couldn’t help that he looked at Max and saw something Max wasn’t.

He couldn’t trust that anyone else would see Max the way he was meant to be seen, either. Even after he told his parents and started going by Maxwell and ‘him’ all the time. Even after he learned how to bind his chest and stuff his smalls. Even after he found an alchemist who knew what she was doing and showed him how to make an ocean-green potion to take every morning that slowly, over years, changed his body to look more like it should.

So – he didn’t let anyone touch him. His voice changed and his shoulders broadened and his facial hair grew in, and he didn’t let anyone touch him. Under his clothes, even with the way his body had changed shape, he was still too soft. He was still too curved.

He touched other people, sometimes, men and women both. There had been one man, in a tavern in Ostwick when he was maybe twenty, maybe a little older, who had come with Max’s mouth on him, then hauled him to his feet and put a hand between his legs, over his trousers.

“What’s the matter?” he’d said, when he felt the softness that was the lump of cloth Max packed his smallclothes with. “Don’t you like me?”

Max, thinking quick, smiled ruefully. “Quite the opposite,” he’d told him, voice low, mouth against his jaw. “I liked that a little too much.”

“Oh! Ah. Well, then.” He cleared his throat and grinned.

“I should, uh, go change,” Max said. “Before. You know.” And he laughed awkwardly. Then he’d gone back to his room, got his hand down his pants, and rubbed himself off, biting his lip and imagining the man on his knees, between his legs.

And that’s how it’s gone. That’s how it’s always gone, for Max.

5.

“So, listen. I’ve caught the hints. I get what you’re saying. You want to ride the Bull.”

_ Oh _ , Max thinks.  _ Oh. Oh no. _ It must show on his face, because Bull shakes his head and stands, looking almost sheepish. “Ah, shit. Never mind. No hard feelings, boss.”

“No!” Max blurts. Bull stops, looks up at him, slowly sits back down. “I mean – uh –“

Maker, this shouldn’t be so difficult. Max was trained in effective communication from the moment he could talk. He’s well-versed in the Game, knows how to speak so that the people around him hang on his every word, has given speeches that have had his followers convinced that all is not lost even as Max felt nothing but hopeless. He’s good with words. He knows he’s good with words.

“You’re not wrong,” he settles on, finally. 

“But?”

Max groans and hides his face behind the handful of papers he’d been looking over as he’d walked into the room. He didn’t think he’d have to have this conversation. Bull had never given a hint that he was picking up on Max’s crush, even if Max  _ had _ been painfully obvious about it, and whenever Max has thought about the possibility of this happening (as he does, occasionally, in bed before sleeping, or while zoning out during a particularly boring briefing at the war table) he’s always skipped over having to have The Conversation and gotten straight to the good part.

“Look,” Bull says, “if you thought you’d be into this, but now I’m here and you’re having second thoughts, that’s okay.”

“It’s not that,” Max says. He sighs, turns, and drops the papers onto his desk. “It’s just – fuck.” He’s not looking at Bull – he’s not sure if he can – but he can feel his eyes on him, watching him. “There’s something you don’t know about me.”

Bull makes a noise, interested, a non-verbal “go on.” Max hears him shift on the bed.

He takes a deep breath in, the kind one takes after crying particularly hard.  _ Just say it, _ he thinks.  _ Just say it! _ But say what? He only has one chance at this – and what if it’s the wrong thing to say? He can’t tell Bull this, his most closely-held secret, and take it back after. If he says it, then it will be said, and what if… what if? 

He can feel the need to say it in his chest, though. Thrumming in his throat. He’s held onto it for so long.

_ I should have told Krem, _ he thinks. Krem would have been safe to tell. It would have been easier than this – they could have laughed about it, and compared experiences, and Max could have asked Krem how to go about this situation, about confessing, or admitting, or coming clean. He’s sure Krem has more experience with it than he does.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he admits.

“You’ve never -?”

“No, not that. I mean, I haven’t done it much, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I just… I don’t talk about this. I don’t know how to talk about this.”

“Okay,” Bull says slowly. “That’s okay. Take your time.”

Part of Max wishes Bull would push. Part of Max wishes he hadn’t said anything, that he’d have let Bull have his way with him and just deal with him finding out in that way. Part of Max – a very small part – wishes that he’d told Bull no outright so he wouldn’t be having this fucking problem.

He wants it, though. He wants to be touched, properly, by someone who knows him as a man and wants him anyway. He wants to know what it feels like.

Still turned away from Bull, he closes his eyes. “I… I don’t have… the parts. That you might be expecting.”

Time seems to stretch. Max is hyper aware of his heartbeat, his breathing, of Bull behind him on the bed. Then, after what feels like an hour but what must have only been a few short seconds:

“Okay.”

Bull’s voice is light and matter-of-fact, like Max has just told him that his favourite colour is green, or that he prefers ale over liquor. Max turns to look at him.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“It can’t possibly be that simple.”

Bull shrugs, smiling slightly. “I don’t care what is or isn’t in your pants, boss. If you have preferences for where you would or wouldn’t like to be touched, or what words to use, let me know, and I’ll follow through.” Then his smile widens into a smirk, and he leans forward. When he continues, his voice is deeper, rougher. “What I do care about is if you know what you’re getting into. With me. If you’re ready for it.” 

6.

Bull kisses him, one hand pinning Max’s wrists above his head, the other at the small of his back, pulling him close, until Max is suitably weak-kneed. He’s thought about this, about Bull’s hands on him, for as long as he’s known him, and now it’s actually happening, he’s not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do, so he just lets Bull kiss him. He presses back against him as much as he can – which isn’t much – and opens his mouth and makes quiet noises at how good it feels, and then Bull’s hand is between his legs, over his trousers. Bull makes an interested noise when he feels the cloth packed in the front of Max’s smalls, presses down in such a way that it rubs against Max’s cock - in such a way that Max thinks he must have done this before with someone like him. Krem, maybe? Or one of those Aqun-Athlok people Bull mentioned?

“Mind if I get this out of the way?” Bull asks, hand cupping the slight bulge in Max’s trousers.

Max laughs weakly. What a thing to ask. “Yeah. Yes. Go head,” he says, shaking his head at the surrealism of the situation.

Bull undoes the lacing at the front of Max’s trousers, slides his hand inside. “You know, Krem sews these neat little pricks out of old shirts for the same purpose,” he says conversationally as he pulls the rolled cloth out from the front of Max’s smalls, tosses it to the floor. “I’m sure if you asked he’d make you a couple. Probably more comfortable than what you’re using.” He puts his hand back on Max’s lower abdomen, burning hot against his skin, his fingers dipping beneath his waistband.

“I don’t - I don’t tell people,” Max says. His voice is too breathy - he’s too focused on Bull’s hand. 

“Just a suggestion,” Bull shrugs, his hand sliding lower. His smallest finger rests lightly against the crease of Max’s thigh and it’s infuriating. 

“Bull,” Max says, tilting his hips forward. “Come on.”

Bull kisses him again, hard. It’s overwhelming. It’s a distraction - Max opens his mouth for Bull’s tongue and that’s when Bull finally touches him where he needs it, sliding fingers lightly along the edges of Max’s cock, making him jerk. 

“Oh,” Bull says, a note of genuine surprise in his voice. “You’re big for a human, aren’t you?”

Max swallows. Bull still has his wrists pinned above his head. “I want to see,” Bull says, pulling his hand back out of Max’s pants and shoving them down around Max’s thighs. 

“Oh Maker,” Max whispers.

Bull has his hand back between Max’s legs, holding things in such a way that Max’s cock juts visibly, hard and glistening. Max isn’t used to thinking of it as big, but with Bull’s fingers there spreading him open and framing his cock, he can almost see what Bull’s talking about. “Look at your cock,” Bull murmurs, “so hard for me. You really want this, don’t you?”

“Please,” Max manages. Bull grins.

“That’s what I like to hear.” He strokes gently at Max’s cock, still watching hungrily. Max’s eyes flutter closed. Bull stops immediately, takes his hand away entirely.

Max’s eyes fly open. “What? No! Don’t stop -”

“I want your eyes open,” Bull growls. “I want you watching me jerk you off, I want you to see it.”

Max swallows a moan, his legs shaking worryingly. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Bull smiles, kisses him softly. “Good boy,” he says, and Max shudders.

He watches as Bull takes his cock between two fingers, dragging them up slowly, pulling the hood back until Max can see the swollen head of it. Max doesn’t know how his cock can look so big alongside Bull’s thick fingers, but it does - it’s almost the length of the last joint of Bull’s forefinger, and when Bull pulls his fingers up towards Max’s body it looks even longer. Bull slides his fingers up and over the tip, and Max gasps, watches his cock twitch without his permission. “Fuck!”

“Yeah,” Bull rumbles, “look at you. You’re so hard for me - you’ve been waiting so long, haven’t you?” His fingers speed up, slipping easily over the sensitive head of Max’s cock, until waves of unsteady heat are swirling in Max’s stomach, until he can feel himself start to drip down the inside of one thigh.

“Bull,” he whispers, “oh Maker -”

“Yeah? Feels good?”

“Oh fuck, you’re going to make me come.”

Bull groans, and Max can feel it in his chest. “Keep watching,” Bull orders him, “keep your eyes on your pretty cock, I want you to see -” and his fingers are sliding across Max’s cock, wet with Max’s slick, and Max hasn’t been touched like this since - fuck, he’s never been touched like this, nobody’s ever done this for him, and he’s never felt this good, not by himself, and how does Bull know just where to touch to drive him wild?

“Oh shit, Bull, Bull, Bull -”

It hits him low and hard, heat bursting inside him and washing over him and as he shakes through it he looks down and sees his own cock spasming between Bull’s clever fingers, and the sight of it forces a shocked moan from his throat, a fresh shock of pleasure through his veins.

7.

It’s nothing like how he remembers it being.

Bull puts him face down on the bed and spreads his legs and puts his fingers inside him one at a time, and he goes slow, but he’s not gentle, either. When he finally pulls Max up onto his knees and slides into him it’s like the bottom drops out of Max’s stomach and then all he can feel is full, Bull hot and huge inside him, and Bull’s hands are on his hips holding him still for Bull to fuck into or they’re on his shoulders pinning him to the bed and Max feels the furthest thing from delicate. 

Bull says “fuck, you have no idea how sexy you are, do you?” and “I knew you’d be good, knew you’d want to be a good boy for me,” and Max has never felt so wanted.

Bull kisses the back of his neck soft, but his hands are bruisingly tight on his hips, and he’d be driving Max up the bed with his thrusts if he weren’t holding him in place. He says “next time I’m tying you down and sucking your cock until you physically can’t come anymore.”

Max wonders how much else he’s been missing out on.

After, Max lays sprawled across the bed, and Bull strokes his hair. He’s a little bit out of his body, like he’s just been in a fight he didn’t expect to win. He thinks that this should feel wrong, Bull treating him so gently, he’s not a girl, he doesn’t need looking after - but the thought is gone as soon as he’s aware of it, and he’s just warm and safe, and wanted for what he is.

At some point he falls asleep, and when he wakes up, the sky is dark and Bull is gone. He lies there for a long while. He can still smell Bull on his sheets.

He’s half expecting to feel odd about the whole thing, now that it’s later and he’s alone. He’s half expecting to regret it. But he thinks about Bull calling it his cock like it was obvious, and about how Bull turned him over on the bed and took him from behind. He feels a little bruised, his wrists and his hips and between his legs, but it doesn’t feel bad. It feels like a promise.

He’ll talk to Bull tomorrow.

Tonight, he doesn’t think he’ll leave his room. He has the time. He’ll keep his shirt off. There’s no one to see him, and he knows who he is.

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: an underage max travelyan realises that the person he is having consensual sex with doesn't see him as male. the scene is not sexually explicit.


End file.
